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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28749276">wishing you were a ghost</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest'>jujubiest</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Biphobia, Canon-Adjacent (if you consider John's journal canon), Gen, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, John Winchester's A Plus Parenting Skills, John Winchester's Journal, Suicidal Thoughts, Teenage Dean Winchester, Who Wants To Hunt John Winchester For Sport? Me!, no beta-readers we die like my will to live after reading that fucking journal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:35:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,231</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28749276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On Dean's seventeenth birthday, John sends him on his first solo hunt. Turns out, the ghosts and Dean have something in common.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>wishing you were a ghost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This happened because someone over on tumblr started posting excerpts from John Winchester's journal, including the fact that for his seventeenth birthday, John sent Dean on a solo hunt to salt and burn the ghosts of two nuns who fell in love and killed themselves because they were discovered. Yes, thank you for asking, I DO want to eat glass and then yeet John Winchester into hell.</p><p>Anyway then I got inspired to write by this post: https://you-cant-spell-subtext-without.tumblr.com/post/640269278292197376.</p><p>Fair warning, this is NOT a John-positive fic and any comments defending his treatment of Dean and Sam whatsoever will be deleted, I don't truck with that chicanery.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not that the hunt was hard, not exactly. It was your basic salt-and-burn, nothing that he hadn’t watched his dad do or helped him do a couple hundred times before.</p><p>But this time was different, in ways that hammered in Dean’s head long after the yellow flames died down to nothing but smoke and ashes.</p><p>Because as he was digging up those graves, as he finally reached the top of the plain wooden coffin someone had buried them in together, unmarked and discarded on unhallowed ground for the dual crimes of love and suicide, the ghosts in question spoke to him.</p><p>Their voices were soft. Motherly even.</p><p><em>I know you,</em> said one, hovering just outside the circle of salt he’d made to keep them at bay while he worked.<em> I was you, once upon a time.</em></p><p>She had been young, still, when she died, though older than Dean could picture himself ever being. Younger than his dad, maybe, by a few years. The same age as the pretty waitresses his dad was forever pushing him to flirt with. She was even pretty herself, in a quiet way, beyond the shadowed eyes and pallid skin, the tell-tale bruise-dark ring around her neck that showed how she had died.</p><p><em>Poor little lost boy,</em> said the other, drifting into focus at her lover’s side. Their spectral hands were clasped between them. Joined in death the way they never could be in life. For a moment, Dean faltered, the shovel in his hands falling still with a muffled<em> thunk.</em></p><p>He’d done his due diligence, just like his dad always taught him, even though every word on every subsequent page made him feel more and more nauseous. The official story was that they had killed themselves out of shame when their affair was discovered. But Dean knew better, knew too well by now how to read between the lines of whatever stories the victors of history liked to tell.</p><p>These women didn’t kill themselves. They <em>were </em>killed. For loving each other in defiance of the laws of God.</p><p>Dean, of course, didn’t believe in God, and therefore he was pretty sure any laws written in his name were bullshit. He had seen enough of the world at seventeen to know how powerful people wielded religion as a weapon against anyone they didn’t like. No, Dean believed in what was in front of him. Things he could see and touch.</p><p>But he had seen the way his dad looked at him, more and more, with doubt in his eyes. And he’d felt the sting of the back of his hand, too, more times than he could count over the years. He worshipped John Winchester the way Christians still worshipped the god of their Old Testament: on his knees, begging for mercy, lowering unworthy eyes.</p><p><em>There’s nothing for you out there,</em> said the first ghost, sad but not unkind. Like it was something she just knew, though she might wish it were different. Her hands reached out to him, beseeching, like she would bridge the gap between them, cross the salt barrier and take him into her arms.</p><p><em>Nothing out there but pain,</em> said her lover. <em>We remember that pain, all too well.</em></p><p><em>Long, lonely glances across rooms you daren’t cross. Quick, forbidden touches that cannot linger and never satisfy.</em> Dean could only stare at them both, face stricken, fear pounding through his eardrums. Not fear of them, but of the future they painted with their words. </p><p><em>One soul calling out to another, a kinship that wants to run deeper and then overflow, bottled up until you could choke on it, filling you with pain instead of joy. </em>The wind, a light breeze just moments before, started to pick up all around him. <em><br/></em></p><p><em>Hurting you both, over and over, invisible wounds that you’re sure will kill you.</em> Dean could only stare, transfixed and terrified. The salt circle began to erode away, but he didn’t notice.</p><p><em>Only a boy and you’re already so tired, aren’t you?</em> <em>Don’t you want to rest, little lost boy? Don’t you want to sleep?</em></p><p>He did. God, he did. Their voices murmured softly around him. They sounded like a lullaby, like rest, like <em>home</em> calling out, even as their words dug into him deep and dribbled poison into the wounds they left.</p><p>What if they were right? What if this longing in him followed him for the rest of his life, dragging him down, dragging everyone he loved down with him? He didn’t think of himself as unlovable, not yet. He could imagine, in his more hopeful moments, that someone might love him someday. He wasn’t sure what that person might look like, who they might be, whether they might be a girl or...or a guy. Before today, it had been far enough back in his mind that he’d fooled himself into thinking it didn’t matter.</p><p>But he knew better now, and it wasn’t himself he was worried for. He could take any amount of pain, almost prided himself on that fact. But the thought of someone he <em>loved </em>being dragged down with him? That, Dean couldn’t handle. That he would never allow.</p><p>He shook himself, dove for the rifle leaning against the edge of the grave just as the salt circle broke. He fired a salt round at the two ghosts, grimacing at the way the recoil slammed into his shoulder. With unsteady hands he set the gun aside and picked up the shovel, working as quickly as he could to pry the lid off the coffin. He knew they’d be back soon, and a part of him still wanted to let them come, let them take him where he could never hurt anyone he loved again.</p><p><em>But who would look out for Sammy</em>, said a voice in his head. It used to sound like his dad, but lately, ever since that moment at Sonny’s, it sounded more and more like his own voice. His mantra, his reason for living. </p><p>He managed to get the lid off the coffin and drag it aside just as one of the ghosts reappeared, her face transformed horribly by a rictus of rage and grief that Dean half-sympathized with even as he tried to dodge her reaching, claw-like hands. He scrambled away from her and toward the edge of the grave, the fingers of one hand scrabbling at the bag of rock salt and scattering it over the bones at his feet even as his other hand tried in vain to find enough purchase to drag himself out of their grave.</p><p>Just as he gained enough leverage to pull himself out, both ghosts were back, their fingers like icy knives tearing at him, and Dean was down in the dirt and the bones and the jagged salt crystals, fighting for his life.</p><p>Then there were hands, pulling him out of that hole and discarding him roughly on the ground. It was his dad, eyes angry, lips a thin line. He didn’t so much look at Dean as through him. Like he’d failed some kind of test.</p><p>Maybe he had, but Dean didn’t hesitate this time. He reached for the lighter in his back pocket, struck a flame, set fire to the lovers’ bones.</p><p>They burned fast and bright, and Dean closed his eyes to the sound of them, calling each other’s names one final time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Fic title is from "A Perfect Sonnet" by Bright Eyes, which I wasn't thinking of when I wrote this but couldn't help but think of after when I was looking for a title.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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